Campaigns are increasingly becoming a show about nothing

Sunday

Jul 29, 2012 at 12:01 AMJul 29, 2012 at 11:42 AM

At the end of our six-minute phone interview last week, Larry Sabato said, "This, of course, was all on background. I assume you're going to run any quote by me so I can change it and make it look more erudite."

At the end of our six-minute phone interview last week, Larry Sabato said, “This, of course, was all on background. I assume you’re going to run any quote by me so I can change it and make it look more erudite.”

Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia and one of the nation’s savviest political observers, was kidding, of course.

But his quip was ripe with irony following our discussion of a New York Times story about how the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are trying to exert control over what is published and aired about them in the mainstream media.

The story outlined the campaigns’ efforts to limit gaffes that opponents can exploit by demanding that reporters allow them final editing power over published quotations. If a reporter wants to talk with a high-level campaign official — even a midlevel official in states such as Ohio — and quote him or her by name, then the reporter must agree to “quote approval” before publishing or airing the story. The penalty for not agreeing: No interview.

“The quotations come back redacted, stripped of colorful metaphors, colloquial language and anything even mildly provocative,” according to the Times story by Jeremy W. Peters.

Political reporters, including me, are used to “background” interviews with campaign and government officials in which their comments are on the record but they are not, vaguely identifiable only as a “Democratic strategist” or “top Republican” or “official with knowledge.” Agreeing to such pre-conditions is frustrating but often necessary to obtain information for a story.

But quote editing is a new twist, one that the campaigns increasingly demand because they can, essentially telling reporters, “Play by our rules if you want access.”

“They’re taking advantage of the situation,” Sabato said. “They realize that news organizations just don’t have the clout they once did. And so they can actually set these conditions and get away with it. Unfortunately, the public doesn’t complain, because the public is misled by the proliferation of websites and blogs. They believe that these quasi-news organizations somehow substitute for the old regime. They do not. They don’t do investigative journalism. They have even less success getting people on the record.”

Even when they agree to be quoted on the record, campaign officials say little that is enlightening. Pointed questions elicit ad nauseam talking points and rote attacks against opponents. Today’s campaigns include one time-wasting conference call after another with surrogates mindlessly reading consultant-written scripts to bracket every move, every statement the other side makes.

Sabato calls them Seinfeld campaigns.

“More and more, I think less and less matters in these Seinfeld campaigns,” he said. “And they are campaigns about nothing by design. They don’t want to get into any of the real decisions that have to be made, because they’re controversial and costly to the candidates. They actually have to take a stand that may alienate some people.”

Over the past several weeks, the presidential race has been dominated by such monumental matters as when Romney really left Bain Capital and Obama’s clumsy “you didn’t build that” statement.

“It’s lunacy,” Sabato said. “And meanwhile, the world economic system is on the verge of collapse, and this country may very well go over the fiscal cliff after the election. Still, the candidates have refused to talk about the real choices.”

Amid these ever more intellectually vacuous campaigns, expert perspective from Sabato and other political scientists — John Green of the University of Akron, Paul Beck of Ohio State and Mark Caleb Smith of Cedarville University come to mind in Ohio — is crucial because they are erudite. They fill the void by offering relevant and honest insight with a talent prized by reporters: an ability to speak in quotes.